Note #2: I just had a five-minute conversation with my girlfriend (also high) about putting Cobra Commander on the “Don’t Tread On Me Flag”, because as G.I. Joe the Movie taught us, Cobra Commander turns into a snake that “was once a man”, so he qualifies for the flag because he was once a man and now he’s a snake and he doesn’t want to be tread on…

Man, fuck Charles Bond. He’s always bitching about how his brother James gets the mad bitches and takes what he wants and gets to drive all the best phallic objects and… oh wait, we’re talking about Charlie Band? Oh jeez, not this douche bag again. Okay, a few years ago there was this new cartoon based on the original “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” that was actually much better than the original. It didn’t last as long as the original, since cartoons these days are actually outlived by their merchandise rather then simply existing to sell it, but it was definitely of better quality that it’s predecessor. On the other hand, (and Spell Check just told me that “otherhand” is apparently not a word in itself, in case you were wondering), there have been numerous retreads on the original “G.I. Joe” and “Transformers” franchises over the last 10 years that have all sat firmly between my legs, chewing on the long nappy hairs of my crotch until someone finally put them out of their misery.

What’s this mean to you? Well, from the late-70s to the mid-90s, Chucky Band (son of the now zombiefied Albert Band) tossed a lovely bunch of coconuts to bad movie fans under his various production companies (Wizard, Empire and Full Moon) before his creditors caught up with him and he had to either go into bankruptcy or go into hiding for a few years till the “smoke” blew over. Whichever he chose, Band went away for a little while, popping his oddly shaped skull up from time to time to put out some softcore vampire flicks so the guys too embarrassed to rent actual porn could pick up some action at the local Cockblocker Video on those lonely Saturday nights. Grandma Amazon Julie Strain was in a couple of ‘em. Whether these movies made him enough money to pay off his financial predators or his loan sharks were found with fatal doses of leeches/large drill holes/knife and hook gashes/12th degree burns/crushed heads one morning, Band apparently felt the time was right to bring back the new and “improved” Full Moon! There was a road show/traveling convention to promote it, William Shatner and Sam Band of The Calling were dragged along (likely to cover up their involvement in one of Band’s mass hooker orgy murder sprees), midgets and fire-eating chicks in their underwear tagged along for a freak show street performance, and the country was introduced one city at a time to what the next generation of Band held in store…

Crap. A big killer puppet shaped pile of it… made of some of Band’s older craps that he’d been saving in his bread box for a special occasion: that of putting them all together in that aforementioned pile, then adding a few freshly squeezed ones too to further shape it into what it is today.

Everything from Full Moon has been total throw away in the last few years. There are no new stars of the industry, just cameos by washed up favorites from yesteryear and fresh faced youngsters who can’t figure out when it’s time to act or when it’s time to give a golden shower to the viewers’ senses. The great (or at least serviceable most times) creators of the good ol’ days have long since departed, so we’re left with know-nothings (whose “artistic vision” has been blurred by disinterest or donkey ejaculate) and, sometimes worse, Band himself. The quality special effects, explosions, gore and nightmarish marionette designs of the grand old times have been bait-and-switched with half-assed character designs, cheap plastic toys and home computer visual effects. The official final a-bomb for Band’s proverbial Japan was Puppet Master Vs. Demonic Toys, but much like the people in those nuclear dystopian fallout movies, I stick around Full Moon to see what kind of glowing green ghoulies will emerge to vomit their blistered entrails on my feet in a desperate plea for help, only to be swiftly crushed in a splatter of monster blood and tiny crunched up bones. It’s better for the poor things this way, so that they can get the truth and start to get over it as soon as possible, instead of suffering through less harsh pains for years, only to suddenly die one day because they’ve grown too weak and vulnerable from all the picking and poking.

Damn it, I’m sleepy.

Run children, the crazy evil chipmunk man wants to massage your large intestines via your colon! Waaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Okay, that woke me up.

So then I saw Evil Bong one day. I wanted to rent Talladega Nights and Death Trance instead, but I only had one coupon and something told me Evil Bong was to be the one for me. I now regret that decision and wish I could go back in time, not to tell myself not to rent the movie, but to go back a bit further and choke Charles Band to death with a fish wrapped in barb wire before he could even make his first phone call to Tommy Chong, who I’m hoping did this movie simply because “That ‘70s Show” was canceled and he needed some quick cash to cover his recent legal expenses. Stupid government, forcing Tommy Chong to do Charles Band movies because you can’t leave the whole “water pipe” issue to your constituents…

Sorry, my girlfriend and I just had an exchange about cannolis (that had nothing to do with The Godfather before you ask) and I called them “Coley-Oleys” and I had to stop and laugh about that for a few minutes… She’s asleep now, so I can talk again. Don’t tell her you and I meet like this, otherwise we’re both in for some real trouble! I’m talking, “Holy shit, we gotta hire the A-Team to get us out of here!” type trouble, and not the original A-Team that had the Mexican guy playing Face either, but the improved version that has the guy from Body Slam playing him!

Evil Bong came about because Charles Band was looking to do an “homage” to Little Shop of Horrors and his sons were talking to him about bongs. He said he doesn’t know why they know what bongs are, but when you’re a guy who has to pay people to hang out with you, I can guarantee he’s bribed his kids for some patented “Band Bonding” on occasion with a few tokes off his 3ft Tunneller Tower. Anyway, as we all know, “homage” is a legal term that everyone in Hollywood uses these days that means “if I mention the original material that I’m ripping off, no one’s allowed to sue me, because this counts as promoting the sale of said original material and therefore the stealing of it’s ideas and characters is considered payment for making said promotion”. Yeah, Band kinda ran out of old horror comics whose copyrights had expired to use as “inspiration” for his flicks, so he’s been relegated to the old “homage” trick.

As for this movie, a group of college stoners all live together in a studio apartment (because even adding a bedroom or two would require getting another set and it was expensive enough getting the velvet curtains and stripper stages for the hallucination scenes later on). The four guys each cover a different stereotype of the “college cinema” dichotomy: Larnell is the charismatic fast talker leader bean whose only goal in life is entertaining himself; Bachman is the career stoner and preeminent couch decoration; Bret is the machismo oozing, protein guzzling, skank plugging, jock-of-all-trades; and Aleister is the four-eyed super nerd with a subscription to “Calculus Hotties Quarterly” and a t-shirt that says “Nerds do it to the 9th Power” is his “club wear”… and by that I of course mean the Chess Club.

Please note that none of those cool things are actually in the movie, so don't go renting it in the hopes of seeing them.

These four guys order a giant cursed bong named Ebee from the back of an issue of “High Times” and one-by-one they start getting sucked into an evil strip club dimension inside of the bong where chicks wearing flesh eating bras (as sold on Band’s Monster Bras webpage… because Band’s a whore and isn’t ashamed of trying to disguise a commercial as a movie, then sell it to the few loyal followers he still has/had left) kill them upon arrival… after a quick (and extremely lazy) lap dance of course. When Aleister’s new girlfriend Janet gets sucked into the soul slurping paraphernalia though, he takes a hit and goes in to save the day while the bong’s original owner Jimbo (Tommy Chong) shows up to try and defeat his old enemy/water pipe for good. If I had a nickel for every time I watched Tommy Chong get medieval on a 4ft bong with a chainsaw, my pockets would be very quiet… much like they are right now.

The movie itself is shit. The actors don’t act so much as look like they’re trying to improvise all of their lines because they thought The Blair Witch Project was a “stroke of genius” (when it was really more a “stroke of penius” that was never washed properly and instead stained your daughter’s prom dress…). The sad part is that they apparently ARE trying to act for real and aren’t just “running with the camera”, as illustrated by one scene that finds Larnell playing “Super Mario World” on his old Super Nintendo, and somehow winding up in four different levels in the 2 seconds it takes for Aleister to walk across the room and turn off his TV! Is this the result of having to do numerous takes, or did they just not pause the game while the camera guys had to stop and relocate their single piece of equipment for each different angle?!

Of course the “special” effects are just the opposite, as practically inanimate puppets and props plague us for 90 minutes with little-to-no movement whatsoever. The entire thing happened inside the movie’s single set and I got real bored of this loser lair real quick. I may hate natural light and there being a world beyond my apartment, but it doesn’t mean I don’t like to be reminded of what it looks like from time-to-time. And what the fuck was up with the bloated padding being done near the middle of the movie?! There’s a pointless 10 minute scene involving Larnell’s wheelchair bound millionaire grandpa and the geezer’s new wife dropping by for a visit that doesn’t contribute to anything in the movie but the running time! I could’ve used that time for sleeping or showering or writing a letter to my congressman banning the sale and rental of any new Full Moon releases in New York and the surrounding areas! Sure, the rental was free, but it’s not like I can take Charley to “The People’s Court” and sue him for wasted time!

Evil Bong is not just a horribly done movie, but it’s a lame commercial too. You can’t look up anything about the movie online without being bombarded with ads for the Monster Bras or the Ebee replica bong or Tommy Chong’s autographed jockey shorts. The fact that the deaths in the movie were all lame and all the same is bad enough, but having each death caused by the soon-to-be-released product of the movie’s director is shameless and just adds to the disdain. Which dain? Dis dain, dis dain right here. And there it is. To further the proof that it’s all one big advertising campaign, the movie is packed to the rim job with weak cameos by the likes of Bill “The Devil’s Rejects” Moseley, Phil “Ghoulies II” Fondacaro and Tim “Trancers” Thomerson as well as Full Moon characters like one of the toys from Doll Graveyard, the clown-snake thing from Demonic Toys (the really crappy one used in Puppet Master Vs. Demonic Toys too, not even the cool old one) and the titular wonder of The Gingerdead Man. They should change his name to Charles Banned and exile his ass from the director’s chair after this one!

It’s over man, just let it go. She was good to you, she took care of you, she loved you like no one else and you fucked it up. She’s gone and you have to give her up. Maybe she’ll come back and find you again someday, but until then, you’ve gotta let her go. If not for yourself, than for the sake of all those poor mutilated bunnies. Come on Charley, put the corkscrew down and leave the bunnies alone. They have families Charley, and though they’re likely to eat their own offspring sooner or later, that’s for nature to decide, not you. Walk away my friend, remember the good times and let them keep you warm on the cold nights while you’re sleeping in the streets. We’ll see you on the other side man.

So there you have it: Evil Bong isn’t just a movie, it’s Charles Band’s way of promoting animal cruelty. For shame on you and a hearty “go fuck yourself!” from me Mr. B. KA-BONG!

At least it was nice seeing Sonny Davis again. I missed that guy...